1. Field of the Invention
The invention concerns a mount to accommodate an oblong medical instrument for computer-assisted surgery.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Surgical procedures are increasingly computer-assisted, thus implemented with simultaneous image monitoring. An operating instrument—a drill, a screwdriver or an awl, for example—is hereby positioned by the operating physician, and the operating instrument is rotated in order to effect the surgical procedure. As an alternative to manual implementation, it is also possible to position and rotate the instrument via a computer-assisted component such as a robot arm. For example, an x-ray image monitoring can be implemented in parallel with such instrument operation, within the scope of which images of the treatment region are continuously acquired and presented to the physician. In these images the physician can detect the instrument, which can be located automatically. Using the image exposures it is also possible to automatically determine the instrument tip shown in the image by suitable image analysis means, and to base the robot control on the determined spatial coordinates. However, in order to be able to use these operating instruments for computer-assisted surgery, they must be provided with a localization device that makes it possible to detect the instrument position with a localization system, so as to be able to determine the spatial position with respect to the spatial orientation of the instrument (and in particular its operating tip). By attaching a localization device to the instrument itself at a defined position relative to the tip and/or axis of the instrument, the localization of the tip/axis is possible. The use of optical localization systems in which, for example, appropriate optical markers are affixed to the instrument is known, as is the use of electromagnetic systems in which corresponding transmission and/or reception coils are arranged on the instrument.
However, it is problematic that the operating instruments of different manufacturers have different configurations, such that it is not possible to be able to attach an essentially standardized localization device to the instruments of different manufacturers. Moreover, the problem frequently exists that, during the rotation of the instrument as a result of the arrangement of the localization device on the instrument, the instrument is also moved, such that no position detection is possible at times since the localization system cannot detect the localization device at every rotation position of the operating instrument.